Here’s an update from RootsAction’s David Swanson who’s on the ground in D.C.

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Ten years ago tomorrow, the longest war in U.S. history began. That’s ten years of missiles and bombs, ten years of kicking in doors and disappearing people, ten years of fighting and fundingthe Taliban, ten years of developing hatred of the United States, ten years of demolishing Afghanistan’s natural environment, and ten years of profiteering to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a day.

And there’s no end in sight.

That’s why I’m writing to you from Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., where thousands of us have just begun an occupation planned months ago and energized in recent weeks by our brothers and sisters at OccupyWallStreet. We’re bringing the occupation to the government that Wall Street corrupts — to the government that launches war without end. Corporate exploitation abroad depends on the threat of war. War funding depends on the defunding of human needs.

We aim to shift our public priorities. These are our goals:
• Tax the rich and corporations
• End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending
• Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and institute enhanced Medicare for All
• End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests
• Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation
• Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages
• Get money out of politics

I’m writing from New York City, where the Occupy Wall Street movement is taking off.
What started as a small group of young people with a vague call to action is evolving into something truly inspiring — and our crew at 350.org is excited to support this nascent movement.Here’s what Bill McKibben had to say about “The 99%” who are Occupying Wall Street — and how climate change fits into the picture:

Let’s show the activists in New York (and in cities all over the country and the world) that the climate movement stands in solidarity with them.Share this image on Facebook, post it on Twitter, and consider joining a local “occupation” near you. Engage in dialogue and join the conversation that is shaping one of the most exciting grassroots movements in recent memory.

It’s hard to believe that just 10 days ago, I was in the afterglow of Moving Planet, sorting through inspirational photos from people all over the world who were moving beyond fossil fuels. The images were powerful, and they fired me up for whatever came next.

What came next was the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the last two weeks it has grown from something small, local, and overlooked by the media into something massive, global, and unignorable. There are now non-violent protests springing up in hundreds of cities, and stories of “the 99%” are dominating headlines everywhere. No one knows exactly what it will become — but it has the potential to be a true game-changer.

We now face exciting questions: what can we all do to support and expand this groundswell? And how might Occupy Wall Street’s amazing energy further embolden the climate movement?

The answers to these questions are starting to become clear. Two days ago I joined a crew of passionate climate activists in Manhattan to march with tens of thousands of people as part of Occupy Wall Street. The demands from the crowd were varied, but it all boils down to this: just about every problem we now face — from foreclosures to the climate crisis — is made worse by unchecked corporate greed and a corrupt political process. As I marched through the city, it struck me that naming (and acting on) the root causes of the world’s biggest problems is precisely what this moment demands.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be zeroing in on the root causes of the climate crisis, and focusing on the iconic battles in the fight for our planet’s future. In the near term, we’ll be focused on stopping the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline–a key fight where corporate corruption and environmental justice collide. If we can stop the pipeline we’ll send a resounding message across the country: that it’s time for the health of our communities and our planet to come before the profits of Wall Street and big polluters. President Obama will decide by the end of the year on whether to approve the pipeline, and we’ll be scaling up our activism to keep the pressure on.

From Wall Street to Washington DC to cities across the country, big things are coming together, and there are ways for people everywhere to join in. You can go to TarSandsAction.org to get plugged into the fight to stop the Keystone pipeline, and OccupyTogether.org to find out more about joining the 99%.

The next phase of these movements will be a sprint, not a marathon. It’s an honor to be running it with all of you.

I love the idea of the general assembly, is more like a direct democracy where everyone participates in decision making. The leader our our movement is not an individual it is the people, we are all equal and can come a consensus.

At these assemblies we need to CONSIDER changes to our whole socioeconomic system, the whole of society.

Currently we are INDOCTRINATED with the concept of a monetary system and democracy. We have look at the outcomes of other socioeconomic system, (facism, socialism, and capitalism and all those other -ism’s; DO THEY WORK?) We can start from scratch look at what works, what fixes our problem, what improves our live.

We should to be open minded to new ideas. Nobody is perfect or know everything there is to know. If you believe in god only god is perfect, if you don’t know well you most likely know no one is perfect.

Consider a DIRECT DEMOCRACY, where voters vote directly for legislation. Remove politicians.Politicians have their own opinions, they are not technicians they can’t fix problems like hunger and crime. They require the knowledge and expertise of other who can. We don’t even vote for the president, the electorate college does! At this time we know politicians are not representing the people but corporations. Whomeever has the A LOT of cash can ‘persuade’ (lobby) politicians to do their bidding.

Currently we ask how much does it cost for a project or piece of legislation, the question should be do we have the resources. Today we have resources to house feed and educate everyone. (i.e. we can feed everyone we have the technology; check out vertical farming and hypo tonics, technology which could produce an ABUNDANT amount of healthy food.) (i.e. if we harnessed the many forms of alternative renewable resources at a much more EFFICIENT rate we would certainly be able to do without oil and gas and without ANY POLLUTION, NONE.) <<< (Technology i.e. science in application solves our problems: heater to warm building, AC to cool rooms, light bulb for artificial light, MEDICINE, etc )

Enter a resource based economy.

In a monetary system in which the ultimate is goal is profit people can’t afford be ethical, produce abundance, be efficient or sustainable. (i.e. a sales person won’t tell you that their product is bad, even if it is. they won’t tell you of a better product even if they know there is because if they do they loose your business. PROFIT) (You cant trust a doctor because if he tells you he needs to take out a kidney you don’t know if he needs to charge for that to pay for his yacht or you really need to have your kidney remove)

RapNews: episode 9. 2011 hits harder than a pre-apocalyptic hangover as “the economy” threatens to annihilate our stock-piles of imaginary, inflated wealth, spawning a battle of epic proportions as insurgent grassroots forces move in to #OccupywallStreet and coalitions of indignados hold their ground in Athens, Madrid and Tel Aviv, facing riotgear, batons and tazers which seek to prevent a more equal redistribution of the proverbial pie. …But enough action and excitement! It’s time for some heroic armchair philosophy: Join your affable host, Robert Foster, as he attempts to shine some light on this mysterious creature, “the economy”. Is this the failure of capitalism that we are witnessing, or its triumph? Is it the end of the end of history, or yet another crazy chapter in the whimsical journey of the human experiment? For the occasion, we’ve pulled out the big guns: admittedly it was a tough choice deciding who to interview: we could’ve had Alan Greenspan on the show, or the Emperor himself, Milton Friedman; the first lady, Christine Lagarde; or financial buffs like Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff and Donald Trump. But to get the freshest juice we knew we had to go further – much further. Rap News 9 features two VIP Internet grandees who have uploaded gigabytes of truth via the one remaning free frequency – the internet – to feed a discerning and ravenous audience, hungry for answers: US Congressman, Ron Paul, and Zeitgeist film-maker, Peter Joseph. Whilst these two fine folk agree with each other on many things, fortunately, there’s no shortage of issues to rap-battle about: Do we need to inject more paper into the financial furnace, or do we need a different fuel entirely – more gold and less lead? Some say we should ditch the entire engine and replace it with something entirely new – but with what exactly? Is the answer to our impeding economic demise contained in shiny new cybernated inventions, or might it actually require us to remember and look back to tried and tested models of economic organisation? Well, time’s short so let the rhyme-rodeo begin as we blast off on a rollercoaster odyssey. It’s the stupid Economy, in all its gory glory.

**** Want to SUPPORT Rap News to keep broadcasting rhyme and reason on the only remaining free frequency?: http://thejuicemedia.com/donate – thank you to everyone who has donated already – massive respect!

**** CREDITS: RN9 has been a herculean collaborative endeavour, for which we are hugely grateful to: Our ineffably awesome designer, Zoe Tame fromhttp://visualtonic.com.au for creating all the original artwork, backgrounds and vectors; Zoe (VAL) and Ellen (Goldie) for yet more lingerie escapades; Lucy for VAL voice-over and Ming for big-gonad Trailer-Man voice; Dave Abbot for cutting-edge state-of-the art CGI effects, animations and exteme doses of
patience; Rosie Dunlop for make-up mayhem and latex love; Trav and Nick for lights and logistical assistance; Milly Langworth and Gilles Gundermann for prop sourcing; ; Jason for not wigging out over the wigs; Lucy & Caitlin for ongoing support; and all the people who write to us to ask us when the next episode is coming out 🙂

**** BEAT: It’s been a Frankensteinian effort on the part of our local musical luminaries for the production on this episode’s beat: Dan West out at Tweak and Twang studios (http://tweakandtwang.org) for phat drum sequencing; Jonathan Dreyfus & Adrian Sergovich for wicked orchestrations; Julez for Zeitgeist instrumentation. Download the mp3 here:http://www.reverbnation.com/rapnews

**** CAPTIONS & SUBTITLES: Many thanks to our French friends, Koolfy and Siltaar, for sync’ing English closed captions.